Grassroots Women Take Their Seat at the Table: Shibuye Community Health Workers and Kakamega County Governor’s Day with Farmers
H.E. the Governor of Kakamega County during the signing of the farmers’ declaration during the 5th Governor’s Day with farmers in Kakamega County, Kenya
On May 13, 2026, more than 2,000 farmers gathered at Lumakanda Township Grounds in Lugari Sub-County, Kenya, for the 5th annual Governor’s Day with Farmers – a gathering that has grown from a ceremonial occasion into a cornerstone of Kakamega County’s agricultural policy calendar. This year, Shibuye Community Health Workers (Shibuye), a grassroots women-led organization and longtime Huairou Commission member, co-convened the event alongside the County Government and other allied partners, bringing farmer priorities directly into the county’s policy record.
Shibuye’s presence was not just symbolic. The organization mobilized farmer participation across the county and supported more than 200 women farmers and 70 youth farmers to attend, exhibit their own climate adaptation work, and engage directly with county leadership. In total, over 500 women and youth showcased locally-led adaptation practices – positioning them not as passive beneficiaries but as active contributors to county-level policy frameworks.
Land rights at the center
Shibuye’s involvement builds on years of grassroots work developing Land Lease Guidelines (LLGs) – a community-designed framework that gives smallholder farmers, and especially women and youth, a way to secure land access outside the costly, complex channels of formal legal tenure. This year’s Governor’s Day became a platform to push for county-level institutionalization of those guidelines, and Shibuye used the occasion to do exactly that.
The stakes are significant, as the three Rio Conventions – on climate change (UNFCCC), biodiversity (CBD), and desertification (UNCCD) – all call for protecting ecosystems and the people who depend on them, yet farmers without secure land tenure are locked out of the very climate finance and carbon markets meant to reward their stewardship. By advocating for formal recognition of community-led land arrangements, Shibuye is working to close that gap between global environmental commitments and the everyday realities of Kakamega’s smallholder farmers.
A Yearly Institutional Event
Beyond land rights, the day surfaced a full slate of farmer priorities that county leaders committed to act on: support for organic fertilizer and regenerative agriculture, investment in community seed banks, expanded irrigation and post-harvest storage, targeted support for women-, youth-, and PWD-led organizations, and a call for the county to allocate at least 10% of its budget to agriculture, in line with the Kampala CAADP Declaration on Building Resilient and Sustainable Agrifood Systems in Africa.
What Shibuye’s participation demonstrates is something the Huairou Commission network sees again and again: when grassroots women organize, they don’t just show up to advocate – they build the structures that make their advocacy durable. The partnership forged over the years between Shibuye and the County Government has institutionalized this event and created an ongoing feedback loop, channeling the specific needs of rural women and youth into policy and resource decisions and creating accountability year after year.
Looking ahead
Shibuye has committed to following up with the County Government to fully integrate the community-led land lease guidelines into county planning documents, including the County Integrated Development Plan. The organization is also pushing for coordinated awareness-building so that women and youth farmers understand their rights within emerging carbon markets – ensuring they participate as informed actors, not vulnerable targets, as Kakamega scales up agroforestry and soil carbon initiatives.
As Shibuye’s work makes clear: durable climate adaptation starts with land justice, and land justice starts with listening to the people who work the land.
This post was drafted with the assistance of AI writing tools. All content, perspectives, and organizational information originate from the Huairou Commission and its members. It has been reviewed and approved by our team.